The Garden of the Lord
by cruisedirector
Summary: How come we never see Javert in the last scene of 'Les Miserables?


_Warnings: Musical/movieverse, not literary. Potentially blasphemous religious content. Fluff.  
_

They are standing above the barricade, waving their flags, singing their hearts out, when Valjean pauses to look around. There is Fantine smiling beside him, and the child Gavroche swinging his legs over the wall, and handsome Enjolras waving a fist in the air in triumph. Farther off, Valjean sees his sister, her family, men he knew in Toulon, faces from Montreuil-sur-Mer...yet one is missing.

"Where is Javert?" he asks.

Fantine smiles beatifically at him. Any hate, any anger she might once have felt toward the man who tormented her last hours is long gone. Such feelings have no place here. Valjean urgently wants to see who Javert has become in this new world where justice and mercy are the same.

"Javert has chosen oblivion," Fantine tells him with a trace of something in her voice - not sorrow, there is no sorrow here, but empathy, perhaps.

The first chill that Valjean has felt since the moment he passed through the holy gates creeps into his bones, as if a cloud has blocked the glorious sun that never dims here. "Are you telling me that he is still lost in the valley of the night?" he demands.

"No man is ever lost. Only those who turn their backs and choose not to enter are denied their reward." For a terrible moment, Valjean thinks Fantine means that in the absence of the vengeful God in whom he always believed, Javert has chosen to damn himself. The disquiet must show in his face, for she quickly adds, "Javert was a suicide. Such men often choose to forget rather than remember their earthly struggles."

So Javert is here; he is simply not _here_. Immense relief fills Valjean. "Where is he?" he asks again.

"Many of those who choose oblivion remain below." Fantine gestures toward the river. It seems fitting, thinks Valjean, that, like the waters of Lethe from the old myths he struggled to read while he was learning, the river is where men go when they wish to forget their mortal lives.

He turns from the barricade, the pinnacle of hope, descending from that height to the level of the street and then the sewer. No filth, no stench blights this new earth. Valjean passes no guards, no furtive villains, no starving children. Everything is new, clean, pure.

It is not difficult to find Javert, though the man looks different without his uniform, sitting on the stones with his feet dangling into the still, bright water. Javert looks even stranger when he looks up at Valjean with no frown, no scowl of recognition, no dawning fury in his eyes.

"Javert," begins Valjean, then does not know what he wishes to say. He cannot explain even to himself why he felt so compelled to seek out his personal nemesis.

"Do I know you, sir?"

The voice is very much the same as the one that long ago told Monsieur Madeleine that his face was familiar, yet the tone is not one that Valjean has ever heard. "You do not remember?" he demands. "How you hunted me? How you swore to bring me to justice?"

Javert spreads his hands. "I do not remember. I am sorry if I caused you pain. I am sure it was not my intention."

This is not Javert. This is a stranger who bears his face, like the convict whom the magistrates and even Javert once mistook for Valjean. It should be enough that Javert has found peace, yet Valjean cannot feel joy for him.

How unexpected it is to find sadness here, especially sadness for the loss of Javert.

Javert is still looking at Valjean, his brow furrowed. "They tell me that those who choose oblivion have seldom known love," he says in a companionable tone, with none of the hurt or shame that would have accompanied such an admission when they knew each other in the world before. "I know nothing of my past. If it is not too much to ask, sir, would you tell me whether we were friends?"

"We were -" Valjean hesitates. _Adversaries_ is the wrong word, and _enemies_ means nothing here. The darkness of hatred cannot stand in the light of love. He wants to tell Javert that at one time he thought the man obsessed with him, yet how can he then explain why of all souls he has sought this man out here? It is something Valjean cannot even explain to himself.

"Did we care for each other?" Javert asks, pulling his feet from the river. His face wears the same puzzled yet calm expression, as if it is of little matter whether he gave up friendship or rage or fervor when he gave up his memories of Valjean.

"Perhaps we did," says Valjean, as much to himself as to Javert. Perhaps Javert's brutal sense of justice had reminded Valjean of all he had learned from the Bishop of Digne when he most needed to remember, just as Valjean's criminal past had kept Javert dedicated to the principles of justice as Javert had accepted them.

Valjean had tried so hard, in the end, to make Javert understand the idea that had enlightened him. The recognition that God's mercy was greater than men could know. The understanding that it was not for a man to judge, but to love others.

He looks at Javert and says, "Perhaps I loved you."

"You loved me?" asks Javert, the astonishment in his voice making him sound more like himself. He rises, straightening his back in the posture Valjean recalls from so many unwanted confrontations. Here in the light, Valjean can remember all of the man at once, the rage beneath the pride, the code and recriminations aimed foremost at himself.

Here in the light, it is the easiest thing to utter the reply: "I loved you."

Yet even here, Valjean is not prepared for the transformation those words bring about. It is like the fairy tale Cosette told him of La Belle et la Bete at the moment when the pure-hearted girl's tears of love transformed the monster, though Javert's transfiguration seems to work in reverse. For a moment the inspector's face is all thunder, the river in flood, the storm, the sea.

Then, just as quickly, the passion eases and Javert is himself, or himself as Valjean has always known him. "I remember now. I remember you, Jean Valjean," he says. His expression holds equal parts awe and wonder. His brow cocks as if he is being told a preposterous story by a criminal or a con man, someone like Thenardier. "You _loved_ me?"

Here there is only truth, and truth is only joy, for truth illuminates the paths that have brought every man out of darkness. Here there is no reason not to say it again.

Javert steps closer, knowing in an instant the truth of the words. Smiling in a way that Valjean has never seen, yet he knows that he has long imagined, just as he knows now that he has long imagined Javert's face crumpling and unfolding, eyes clear and fierce when he looks to see Valjean as he is. Not as Prisoner 24601, not as Monsieur le maire, not as the generous man from the St-Etienne-church, not as the devil who gave Javert freedom.

And because they are here, standing together in the light, there is no reason Javert will not return the words to him, not of the past but of this present that will never end. Valjean offers his hand, Javert takes it, and together they turn from the river toward the great singing throng of the world beyond the barricade.


End file.
